It used to. Some time in the mid 2010s it changed to General Processing Unit, driven by things like PhysX, crowdsourced protein crunching efforts like Folding@Home, and particularly the cryptocurrency mining boom.
Now we're in the 2020s and GPUs are all about being Generative Processing Units thanks to the "AI" craze.
I don't think that is the prevailing sentiment. GPU still means Graphics Processing Unit to me and most tech people I know. I think it's more just in the folding and crypto communities that people have repurposed the initialism.
But I have still used GPUs as graphics processing units for game and little else this entire time as has everyone I know. Who decided on this nonclemature change? Because it certainly doesnt represent the primary use case...
Downvotes mean little, arguably even moreso than Reddit. I've noticed I've garnered a dedicated downvote squad who tend to make the rounds once or twice a day.
But that aside: Surely you've heard of GPGPU (General Purpose Graphics Processing Unit), a term I again call bloody stupid. Just call it a General Processing Unit in that case. More recently, the amount of money changing hands in furious bids for more Generative Processing Units to fuel the "AI" craze absolutely dwarves actual graphical applications and even the general use cases.
I'm merely calling the bird that quacks like a duck a duck, not a swan duck bird.
The "truth", for what that's worth, is that GPUs haven't been about graphics as a primary concern for quite a while now and the terminology hasn't kept pace.
Besides, we're apparently here talking about GPUs that can't do graphics.
I think the confusion is between the nature of the acronyms, GPUs are Graphic Processing Units as a hardware concept, GPGPU is a software concept to use GPUs for general processing.
If the primary use case of Graphics Processing Units no longer concern graphics per se, would it not be prudent to rename them to something more appropriate?
Personally, if we could use a new acronym all together I would prefer to just call them PPUs: Parallel Processing Units. That way we won't ever have to rename them ever again as the sands of time shift onwards.
Dalewyn simply posted a substantial truth in imprecise terms. Some interpreted it fixated with its literality - which was irrelevant.
A search for the use of 'Generative Processing Unit' can reveal that the expression may be far from widespread. Nonetheless, GPUs today are importantly that. Explicit adoption of that expression matters little in this context - it is not the point. In fact, I initially misread the text in the post as "General Processing Unit", and it still made sense.
...Usual exhausting snipers. No wonder the whole world is going to hell. Is any relevant vandal also thinking of a reply? Because the impression left is that you have something like "feelings to express". Which remains as collectively constructive as performance dance in your closet.
And no, GPGPU is a bloody stupid term.